


went for the kiss (and got the bite)

by The_Resurrection_3D



Series: EddTord Finale [5]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Christmas, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Necrophilia, Mentioned Edd/Tom/Tord, Mentioned Matt/Paul, Mentioned Paul/Patryck, Minor Character Death, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-31 07:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20111719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Resurrection_3D/pseuds/The_Resurrection_3D
Summary: Tord and Matt spend the last hours of Christmas together, and maybe set a guy on fire in the process.





	went for the kiss (and got the bite)

One of Tord’s best defenses against cravings is to read all his fan-mail from necrophiliacs.

A lot of them are pretty standard for a celebrity, at least so Tord assumes – you’ve changed my life, helped me through hard times, bladdy blah blah. Perhaps that’s what that woman Stella Day was going on about with “inspiration porn.”

The DSM-V has ten different classifications of necrophiliac, from simply roleplaying 1s to warmth-repellent 10s only able to perform with a bonafide corpse. Tord isn’t really sure why that would catch on, of all things, especially when the UK doesn’t use the DSM-V anyway – makes it all sound like a video game, a leveling-system based on how much a social failure you are.

He likes to pretend the numbers they identify themselves as are the inverses of how attractive they are beyond the page. He likes to pretend his hands aren’t shaking. He likes to pretend he has sweat glands left to make the pages wet.

In his lap, Ringo purrs.

* * *

Ringo is the best cat a man could ever ask for. Sure, Tord had never had a cat before he’d moved in with Edd and Tom, but any cat that doesn’t scratch at him when he picks her and screams into her soft, furry body is alright by him.

She simply murps, looks at him as if to ask, rather kindly, what the fresh hell he thinks he’s doing. He holds her in his arms like a newborn infant, forcing trembling lips up in a smile as he presses a kiss to her forehead, lets her lick at his finger. Cats love dead things, after all.

* * *

"_You have my eyes,”_ Tord says softly in a language he knows she doesn’t understand, raising up one of her paws for a gentle hi-five.

Something crashes – a loud curse – and Ringo dashes off into the dark abyss of the living room, her back claws cutting a clean wide line down the top of Tord’s foot. He hears her shimmy up the Chrismas tree, the dull plink of a plastic orb falling off it.

A questioning noise from Tord, moving to the cupboard for the duct tape.

“Jammed my fuckin’ toe,“ Tom grouses from down the hall, his door swinging open. "Fucking hate Christmas." 

Needless to say, Tom hadn't been happy about his stolen sock full of coal

(with the gift Tord had selected so many months ago -- bullet-shaped shot glasses-- still hidden under Tord's bed). 

_Saint Nick just loves messing with_ you, Tord thinks again, remaining silent as Tom appears before him, Edd’s dinosaur pajamas clutched tight around him like a blanket.

Ah, the eternal duality of Thomas: loves to sleep alone, loves more to steal his boyfriends’ clothes.

"My luck always gets worse around the holidays – ever notice that?” A full-body shiver as Tom shoulders past Tord to the fridge – to his vodka. “Even the alcohol’s somehow always worse! Like you have entirely new drinks just for getting smashed on Christmas and yet it all sucks. And it’s fucking freezing, how are you not cold?”

Tord clears his throat. Tom pulls his head out of the fridge, looks at the clock on the microwave. 1:30 am.

Tom shrugs. “I’ll move my 10 am bottle to 10:15.” Tom pulls out his latest – still half-full from Edd gently chiding it out of his hands when Tom had gotten so sloshed he couldn’t even cut his own slice of pizza, and Tord had only watched and chewed his nails and thought of Tom’s mother.

Tom looks as though he’s waiting for Tord to say something, but Tord doesn’t.

When Tom passes him again, Tom taps his shoulder, says he’s bleeding, says to turn the heat up, and then once he’s out into the hall again and banging a loose limb on the closet door: “Extra blankets in here.”

* * *

Tord feels like a harp whose strings are being plucked at by vultures. It makes his mouth taste like copper and his whole body sing. 

* * *

Tord opens the fridge, closes. Opens, closes. Chews gum. Paces. Goes to his lab and chews some of his brain tissue samples – Romeros don’t hit the spot, not at all, but they’re grey and slimy and if he pretends hard enough then –

He plays his guitar and sings those songs that have always calmed him, the words empty signifiers, hums where he can’t remember. Classical guitar done with jagged, dirty nails.

_Sweet communist, communist daughter, standing on the seaweed water…_

He wishes Matt were here. Matt never performs without a fix.

* * *

Soundproof walls, steel everywhere to take his punches and kicks. Inside the harp’s strings are corroding in acid and he can _hear_ it. No blood roaring in his ears, not even the scuttle of insects or the spreading of fungi’s’ thin, groping fingers. The foul, diseased magic that keeps a corpse upright sounds like a dull, mechanical droning.

Or like elevator music, slowed waaaay the fuck down.

The scene from the movie, the torso flailing about on the lab table, her brown-gray skin stretched taut over what was left of her face like trash bad vaccum-sealed. Her naked spine wiggling back and forth, back and forth. _“The pain of being dead.”_

* * *

At 2:25 am Tord stumbles out into the white-streaked night and feels his knees sink into the still-piling snow. It’s not melting. He scoops some up into his hands and imagines the snowman in the front yard is himself as he launches a hard-packed ball at the back of its head. It doesn’t fall off. Damn.

Tom is too drunk and Edd too heavy a sleeper to notice if he goes back inside and gets the flamethrower, right?

* * *

It’s not entirely festive – the problem with Romeros is that along with sound, they’re attracted to bright, flashing lights, so all the strings of varicolored bulbs that normally would dress each building have been or are currently being pulled down by some slack-jawed mouth-breather, groans muffled by the crunch of glass under their broken, yellow teeth. Painted glass crunches under his feet, toppled Christmas trees and fake snowmen chewed to black by his flamethrower's sapphire teeth. Some zombies_ oooo_, some _aaahh,_ some clap. 

_“Kameratene!”_ He calls to each of them. _“God jul, kameratene! God jul!”_

They wave back. Big, empty smiles.

* * *

One of the things zombie-hunters like to do is start fires in trashcans and either blow the can up or pick off their targets one-by-one from the rooftops. The collectors,— game-rangers, organ thieves, and necrophiliacs—they try and get you alone.

That was always one of the things his father would warn him about during one of his attempts to dissuade Tord from following in his uncle’s footsteps: your drug dealer could rob you, rape you, string you up like a Christmas ham, or God knows what.

What Tord heard was Trust No One.

So Tord looks for the familiar flag in the window of the mortuary: red, white, gray, and black.

He can remember Edd designing it, what feels like so long ago: red for blood; white for maggots (aka a little extra fun); gray for the color of zombified flesh; black for being a black-pilled incel loser. Tord feels his skin inch.

He’s only wearing the sweater and jeans he’d fallen asleep in. How terribly unsexy; he leans against the dusty brick wall to roll the cuff of his pants up, exposing his prosthetic to the cold, howling air. Fixes his hair best as he can in the dark glass.

What had Matt called him? _The face that launched a thousand freaks?_

A wink, a finger gun to his reflection.

After no debate, the fuel tank-pack is hidden under his sweater, the nozzle shoved down the front of his pants.

**Author's Note:**

> To summerise why part two still isn't done: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa 
> 
> Thank you for being so understanding. In all seriousness I have been working on the revision, it's just that a) my first drafts for longer projects have all been ultra useless, so I'm essentially writing stuff from scratch, and next) emotional blocks around the project that have no real solutions. 
> 
> And also Pokemon Go. 
> 
> A few extra notes: 
> 
> _God jul, kameratene!_ \- 'Merry Christmas, comrades!'
> 
> The song Tord is singing is "Communist Daughter" by Neutral Milk Hotel. 
> 
> Finally, the movie scene referenced is from _Return of the Living Dead;_ you can watch the respective clip [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NhF6zphSx8) Warning for body horror and tiddies out.
> 
> Thanks for reading! All feedback is appreciated!


End file.
